7.1 Objectives

In all seriousness, the objective of this section is to EMPOWER YOU, the student.

You will learn some tips on Prevailing in College. You will learn how to begin your decision on selecting a Major that you will enjoy. You will learn how you can go to any great university, as long as you have a good GPA. You will be introduced to tools to fund that Education. You will be introduced to tools that will allow you to write a Resume and find a job.

7.2 Discussion

"It's not how good you are, but how BAD you want it!"Lokelani YamanohaFinancial Aid Counselor, MCC

This unit, and the accompanying paper on your ten-year life plan (see Unit 7.5.1, below; also at Unit 4.5.2), are designed to assist you in your quest for success. What is success? To Faulkner it meant prevailing rather than enduring; I think for you that means having choices in your life style. Education, a great education, is what makes those choices possible. So how do you get that great education, pay for it--better yet get it for free, and enjoy a high quality of life? This section is designed to help you over some of the hurdles, and stimulate your thinking. As John Lennon says, "Imagine," and as Loke says, want it, success, BADLY.

7.2.1 Self-Empowerment in College

College should be a great time in your life; it should be fun, difficult, challenging, rewarding, and energizing. It is a period when you will meet and make new friends who will stay with you throughout your life. In order to empower yourself, take some time to be curious, to discover the many facilities and people at a college who are there to assist you--then make use of their services. Read through the College Schedule to find out the location of the library with its many electronic assets, the best Computer Center that you can use, the athletic facilities, the security office, and particularly the BIG THREE: the Counseling Center, the Tutorial Center and the Transfer Center. Read through the Student Handbook. Someone took a lot of time to make that publication work for you.

Want to get really smart about a college: check the WEB for the College Homepage; it will probably have some neat information that is not contained within print media.

If you are learning disabled or physically challenged, find out what special facilities are available to you. If you are not sure, but think you might need some special assistance, ask a counselor what is available, and/or look for the Special Education Office. Ask a friendly faculty member (there are a few, mostly in the Math Department) for assistance.

The key if for you to get PROACTIVE and curious, to search out the many, many facilities and people that are available to you. Armando Koghan, one of my best students, once came to my office and ask me to go with him to the cadaver lab (Yes, De Anza had such a lab), and I did because he was exercising his curiosity--and now pushing mine--. His curiosity made him a great student. The co-founder of the Jewish Student Union, he transferred to UCLA, but not before teaching me (great students teach teachers) about a facility I had never even known existed on campus.

7.2.2 Becoming Super Student

In the Syllabus, you will find my maxims for student success; I'll repeat them here because they really are the keys to becoming SuperStudent:

First impressions count.

Master the technology; in order to prevail you must understand Word and Power Point(or equivalent), and how to use email and the Internet. FACEBOOK, MYSPACE, & YOUTUBE can all help your education. I have not done Twitter yet, but . . .

It is OK to be wrong.

You learn more when you disagree.

Do not be held back by my low standards.

Do not be constrained by the Course Assignments; do more than suggested by the course--again, it is YOUR education.

You have a responsibility to your fellow students.

The race goes--and college really is competitive-- to those students who get off the mark quickly, and to those students who then discover this secret: helping other students will help you to become a great student yourself.

You have to make a lot of choices in college. One of the simpler is what teacher to take for a course. Ask your classmates what their experience has been. If a teacher has a homepage--and many faculty do, you can learn a great deal about the teacher and the course from reviewing the homepage.

7.2.3 Happiness: Aptitude Testing

The choice of a career path is critically important, and one that you can get plenty of good help with, if you will just seek it out. Start by asking yourself a simple question such as "What would I like to major in?" The key word in this question, is "like." Do you like Math better? or English? Which would you rather study? In which subjects do you do well? These questions may lead you to a wise selection of a major. There is an excellent resource at De Anza College called Career Services. This site contains information on a large variety of programs available at the College.

Ordinarily in your first two years you will focus on General Education subjects; that will give you some time to determine which subjects you do like, and to get some help with the important questions about where to continue your studies.

Be careful of two traps: doing what your parents think is best for you, or doing what they did, because you know--or think you do--what is involved in THEIR career. Parents usually want the best for their children, but you are old enough to make your own decisions. I have seen many students studying subjects they did not enjoy, just because they were receiving parental pressure to be an Engineer, or go to Berkeley to marry a successful student.

I've also seen students start off to be an electrician, because their father was an electrician and wanted them to stay in the family business. The trap here is that you will allow yourself to be steered into an area that is not yours. YOU might as well be happy, and your chance for happiness is greater if you are doing something that you like or are good at.

Go to the Career and Transfer Center and make arrangements to do some Aptitude Testing. EUREKA and SIGI-PLUS are two programs that are available at De Anza, the latter for a very small fee.

At Maui Community College, make an appointment at the EOC, Educational Opportunity Center, to see Barry Krystel or Loke Yamanoha. They make excellent use of the SDS, Holland SELF-DIRECTED SEARCH. this simple test can lead you to a consideration of hundred of occupations that are right for you. There are about a cajillion (a number larger than a google) jobs out there with new ones being invented every day. Today, we all know--at least you should--what a Web Master is, someone who designs, administers, and manages a WEB site. But fourteen years ago, we did not even have a WEB. An Aptitude Test will help steer you to the field that is right for you, new or traditional.

7.2.4 Picking YOUR best 4 & 6 year Colleges

Once you have determined your aptitudes and major area of interest, you can then begin to think about what college is best for you. I encourage you to dream, think big. You can go anywhere you want. DO NOT EVEN CONSIDER FINANCES. It is not reasonable to say," Well, this life I will go to pretty good school , but next life I will go to a great school." Go to a great school now. We'll see in the next section how to make that happen, how to fund any college. Again the Transfer/Career Center or the Library is the place to visit. The Transfer/Career Center(864-8234) has catalogues and a new program called College View which allows you to see what colleges look like in living color from CD-ROMS.

The Learning Center/Library has separate tables with 4 year college information,all college catalogues on microfiche, and the reference librarians will be happy to help you.:-)

The Internet has wonderful information about colleges; some colleges will allow you to request applications and more information right off their homepage. On your web browser enter

http://www.collegename.edu

and try that for a start. If that does not get you to the college you want, enter the college name in the Yahoo Education Search Engine. I just tried Rice University in Houston, a great school, so wealthy that most students get grants. Rice's Board has told them to get more minority students, to diversify like California. What might be a good school to check out if you are a minority student? I could hotlink their page, but that is too easy. You figure out their address based on the hints given here.

If you want to know which great school is best you for, and visit that school online, you could also start your search at Princeton Review.This site has listings of the Best Business schools, law schools, medical schools. etc. And you can visit the homepages of virtually every great school in the US here. I highly recommend it.

While you are planning, do not forget your Master's degree, a necessity for most folks of your ilk. A Master's may only take one or two years of residency to acquire, and is a necessity in many professions. Count on taking your Master's at a school different from your undergraduate degree. Diversity is important to YOUR education. Again, the Libraries/Centers have lists of the best graduate schools within disciplines. Like an Olympic athlete, go for the Gold!

7.2.5 Marketing Yourself: Scholarships and Financial Aid

If you go to a Community College, you get the first two years of your college for very little cost. Therefore you have only two years to fund. Therefore YOU can go to a GREAT school, this life. If you are going to a great school, do not hesitate to borrow up to $50K for a B.A./B.S., $75K (total for a Master's). You invest in a new car. Sell it, and invest in YOURSELF. This is particularly painless if you qualify for a subsidized Stafford Loan.

There are two great on-line assets that will help you learn about and obtain $ for your education. They are the Financial Aid Information Page and the FASTWEB Scholarship Search. Complete the forms for FASTWEB; it will take you about 15 minutes. 15 minutes later, you will get a prioritized list of the scholarships that FASTWEB's computers believe you are eligible for. You then review each of them, and, if you like, the program will print out a letter request for information. All Free!

You then have to start writing. You have to write an argument that convinces people that they should fund your education. Schools look for Renaissance people, people who are active in school, in clubs, in the community. Schools are often looking for targeted minority students. The Ten-Year life plan, below is a start to helping you write about yourself. You may also need to ask faculty for letters of recommendation. If you do, give them a resume, or a summary of your life, focusing on your service to school and community, your GPA, your Major, and your family background.

Join clubs if you haven't already. The more time a student spends on a campus, the better their grades. Clubs and activities help, not hinder, your GPA.

Remember Loke's Dictum, It's how bad you want it. . .

7.2.6 Job & Career Choices--Starting Today!

There are only two kinds of jobs to have in college: those that pay well and those that give you the type of experience you need to achieve your long-term career goal. THERE ARE NO OTHERS!! Fastfood is VERBOTEN, unless you wish to run your own restaurant or chain later in your career.

Jobs that pay well include selling real estate part time (why not make $50K per year, part time, as a student--You do not need a college degree; you only have to take a De Anza course in order to pass the State test), waiter/ress, WEB Page Designer (Pays about $50 an hour if you do it right). Jobs that prepare you for a career include volunteer in a hospital, if you want to be a doctor; receptionist in a law-firm if you want to be a lawyer.

Otherwise, you should NOT work in college. Sell that car the folks bought for you--a form of indentured servitude, quit your job (unless it meets one of the two criteria, above), and become a full-time student. Spend your time in the library becoming SuperStudent, not in McDonald's slinging fries (Cradle-to-grave minimum wage at the arches and similar). So how about planning for a real job--if for no other reason than to write the 10 Year Plan below.

There are two really gonzo WEB sites that have lots of great job information. The first, CareerMosaic, also will help you to write a RESUME. The second Monster.com contains everything you ever wanted to know about finding employment. Monster also includes wonderful links to sites with specialized job information.

7.3 Summary

Get YOURS!!

7.4 Lab

Life. College.

7.5 Exercises

EXERCISE 4.5.2--TEN YEAR LIFE PLAN-RESEARCH PAPER

"Preparing for the Millenium"

Theme Four is YOUR paper, your MAGNUM OPUS for the course. The PEC incl WORKS CITED, is worth 20 points; the paper itself, will be worth 100 points. Typed, double spaced, the paper's minimum length is 6 pages (2000 words) with 7 references, at least one of which will come from your course readings. There is no maximum length.

It is a personal paper that precisely states your detailed GOAL for the year 20__ (Ten years from NOW!), and ARGUES convincingly how you are going to achieve your goal. The paper will contain three required sections: (Educ=1/2)

The EDUCATION PLAN will argue in detail where and when you are going to obtain such education as is necessary to achieve your goal. Why did you choose which college to transfer to? Where and why will you take your graduate work? Where will financing for this education come from? If you decide to take all of your education in the Bay Area (or in Hawaii), defend that geographic choice.

The WORK PLAN will argue in detail where you will work during this period and why. Work would probably support educational financing and career development. How will you get those jobs? In that respect, your GOAL will be stronger if you name a specific type and size of company (or a specific company) rather than just a career field.

The LIFESTYLE PLAN will argue in detail how you will live your life and why. Personal inventory, selection of marital status, alternative lifestyles, and responsibilities toward siblings or parents may enter in here. While this section may require less research, it should be precise and thoughtful.

You may include any other sections that you feel you need such as a background section (considering your heredity and environment, a kind of personal asset inventory),real estate or investments, community or religious activities,, service to others, passionate hobbies, sports, etc (or you may wish to include some of these in your LIFESTYLE PLAN.) This is YOUR paper so you have free reign. You may write in the future tense or the past tense--just be consistent and remember that this is argument, NOT FANTASY. Your choices will be tested for the quality of research and rationality within the context of the choice. If you choose mediocrity, you must defend that choice. If you are going to be a Fish Crier (see Carl Sandburg's poem),that is fine; but how can you BEST prepare yourself to be the BEST fish crier? Get a Life!